Open Semantic Desktop Search vs UltraSearch

Open Semantic Desktop Search is free, open-source software for full-text and semantic search, text analytics and mining across large document sets. Its desktop edition comes as a virtual machine appliance for import into VirtualBox; configured shared folders point to documents, and indexing starts when the machine launches. Search supports wildcards, Boolean AND/OR/NOT and fuzzy matching. Multilingual semantic search uses a thesaurus to find synonyms, narrower terms and aliases, while stemming helps find other word forms. Interactive facets group metadata such as authors, organizations, people, dates, tags and document types. Previews can display PDFs, extracted text, table rows and images. Analysis tools include date charts, word clouds, word lists, network graphs and interactive maps. OCR can recognize text in images and scanned PDFs. Connectors include files, feeds, websites, SQL databases, MediaWiki and IMAP email. The desktop appliance is for a single user; a separate server installation is aimed at organizations and research teams. The multilingual virtual machine image is a 4 GB download, and the German desktop image is listed as coming soon.

UltraSearch is a Windows tool for searching file names and contents across local storage, company networks and SharePoint. Results appear as you type, and direct SharePoint searches do not require indexing. Queries can use text or phrases in file contents, wildcards, regular expressions and AND/OR terms. Search locations include local and network drives, external drives, USB sticks, SD cards and SharePoint. The Free edition costs nothing and is limited to private, non-commercial use; it includes 30 days of Professional features. Professional costs $30 a year, billed annually, and is available for Windows Desktop and Windows Server. It adds filters by file type, dates and size, searches inside ZIP files, and bulk actions to move, archive, delete or rename files from results. Professional also supports Google Drive searches and can connect to DataCentral, a central full-text and metadata index for multiple users. DataCentral runs on premises, keeps its index locally and integrates with NTFS permissions and Active Directory, according to the maker. Downloads do not require registration; an online manual and contact form are provided for support.